Second kind of sincerity. We proceed to the second kind of truth of heart or uprightness, which I called an evangelical uprightness. This is a plant found growing only in Christ’s garden, or the inclosure of a gracious soul. It is by way of distinction from that I called moral, known by the name of a ‘godly sincerity,’ or the sincerity of God. Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world, II Cor. 1:12. Now in two respects this evangelical sincerity may be called godly sincerity. 1. Because it is of God. 2. Because it aims at God, and ends in God.
- Because it is of God. It is his creature —begotten in the heart by his Spirit alone. Paul, in the place forementioned, II Cor. 1:12, doth excellently derive its pedigree for us. What he calls walking in ‘godly sincerity’ in the first part of the verse, he calls ‘having our conversation by the grace of God’ in the latter part; yea, opposeth it to ‘walking with fleshly wisdom in the world’—the great wheel in the moral man’s clock. And what doth all this amount to, but to show that this sincerity is a babe of grace, and calls none on earth father? But this is not all. This ‘godly sincerity’ is not only of divine extraction—for so are common gifts that are supernatural—the hypocrite’s boon as well as the saint’s—but it is part of the new creature, which his sanctifying Spirit forms and works in the elect, and none besides. It is a covenant-grace. ‘I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you,’ Eze. 11:19. That ‘one heart,’ by which the hypocrite is so often descried in the word.
- Because it aims at God, and ends in God. The highest project and ultimate end that a soul thus sincere is big with, is how it may please God. The disappointment such a godly sincere person meets with from any other, troubles him no more than it would a merchant who speeds in the main end of his voyage to the Indies, and returns richly laden with the prize of gold and silver he went for, but only loseth his garter or shoe-string in the voyage. As the master's eye directs the servant's hand—if he can do his business to his master's mind, he hath his wish, though strangers who come into the shop like it not—thus ‘godly sincerity’ acquiesceth in the Lord’s judgment of him. Such a one shoots not at small nor great, studies not to accommodate himself to any, to hit the humour of rich or poor; but singles out God in his thoughts from all others, as the chief object of his love, fear, faith, joy, &c.; he directs all his endeavours like a wise archer at this white, and when he can most approve himself to God, he counts he shoots best. Hear holy Paul speaking, not only his own private thoughts, but the common sense of all sincere believers: ‘We labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him,’ II Cor. 5:9. The world’s true man is he that will not wrong man. Though many go thus far, who can make bold with God, for all their demure carriage to man; some that would not steal the worth of a penny from their neighbour, yet play notorious thieves with God in greater matters than all the money their neighbour hath is worth. They can steal that time from God—the Sabbath-day I mean—to gratify their own occasions, which he hath inclosed for himself, and lays peculiar claim to, by such a title as will upon trial be found stronger, I trow, than we can show for the rest of the week to be ours. Others will not lie to man possibly in their dealing with him—and it were better living in the world, if there were more of this truth among us—but these very men, many of them, yea, all that are not more than morally upright, make nothing of lying to God, which they do in every prayer they make, promising to do what they never bestow a serious thought how they may perform. They say they will sanctify God's name, and yet throw dirt on the face of every attribute in it; they pray that the will of God may be done, and yet, while they know their sanctification is his will, they content themselves with their unholy hearts and natures, and think it enough to beautify the front of their lives—that part which faceth man, and stands to the street, as I may so say—with a few flourishes of civility and justness in their worldly dealings, though their inward man lies all in woeful ruins at the same time. But he is God’s true man that desires to give unto God the things that are God's, as well as unto man the things that are man's—yea, who is first true to God and then to man for his sake. Good Joseph—when his brethren feared as strangers to him (for yet they knew no other) [that] they should receive some hard measure at his hands —mark what course he takes to free their troubled thoughts from all suspicion of any unrighteous dealing from him. ‘This do,’ saith he, ‘and live; for I fear God.’ Gen. 42:18—as if he had said, ‘Expect nothing from me but what is square and upright, for I fear God. You possibly think because I am a great man, and you poor strangers where you have no friends to intercede for you, that my might should bear down your right; but you may save yourselves the trouble of such jealous thoughts concerning me, for I see one infinitely more above me, than I seem to be above you, and him I fear—which I could not do if I should be false to you.’ The word II Cor. 1:12, for sincerity is emphatical, "—a metaphor from things tried by the light of the sun, as when you are buying cloth, or such like ware, you will carry it out of the dark shop and hold it up to the light, by which the least hole in it is discovered; or, as the eagle, say some, holds up her young against the sun, and judgeth them her own if able to look up wishly against it, or spurious if not able. Truly that is the godly sincere soul, which looks up to heaven and desires to be determined in his thoughts, judgment, affections, and practices, as they can stand before the light which shines from thence through the word—the great luminary into which God hath gathered all light for guiding souls, as the sun in the firmament is for directing our bodies in their walking to and fro in the world. If these suit with the word, and can look on it without being put to shame by it, then on the sincere soul goes in his enterprise with courage; nothing shall stop him. But if any of these be found to shun the light of the word—as Adam would, if he could, the seeing of God—not being able to stand by its trial, then he is at his journey's end, and can be drawn forth by no arguments from the flesh; for it goes not on the flesh's errand but on God’s, and he that sends him shall only stay him. Things are true or right as they agree with their first principles. When the counterpane agrees with the original writing, then it is true. Now the will of God is standard to all our wills, and he is the sincere man that labours to take the rule and measure of all his affections and actions from that. Hence David is called ‘a man after God's own heart,’ which is but a periphrasis of his sincerity, and is as much as if the Spirit of God had said he was an upright man—he carries on his heart the sculpture and image of God's heart, as it is engraved on the seal of the word. But enough for the present. This may serve to show what is evangelical uprightness.
